What's Up with Tech?
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With over three decades in telecom and IT, I've mastered the art of transforming social media into a dynamic platform for audience engagement, community building, and establishing thought leadership. My approach isn't about personal brand promotion but about delivering educational and informative content to cultivate a sustainable, long-term business presence. I am the leading content creator in areas like Enterprise AI, UCaaS, CPaaS, CCaaS, Cloud, Telecom, 5G and more!
What's Up with Tech?
Navigating the Next Frontier: Zadida's Charge into the Edge Computing Evolution with Open-Source Innovation
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Embark on an auditory journey to the cutting edge of technology as we host Michael Maxey of Zadida, a visionary in the rapidly expanding domain of edge computing. Prepare to have your perspective on digital infrastructure transformed; we delve into the nitty-gritty of orchestrating workloads right where the action happens—close to data origins. Maxey, known for his preference to be called by his last name, imparts his expertise on the necessity of autonomous systems capable of adapting on-the-fly, even in the absence of continuous connectivity. He also unveils the strides Zadida is making with their open-source Edge Virtualization Engine (EVE), and how a significant investment led by SmithPoint Capital is supercharging their trajectory into the enterprise stratosphere.
Feel the pulse of innovation as we unpack the power of collaborations that are reshaping the landscape of edge computing. Through strategic partnerships with industrial heavyweights like Emerson and Rockwell Automation, Zadida is not just dreaming of a future where applications are seamlessly scaled across multiple locations—they're actively constructing it. We share exhilarating developments from companies venturing into realms from oil and gas to retail, harnessing the prowess of edge solutions. Furthermore, get a sneak peek into the upcoming initiatives within the Linux Foundation, sparking a beacon of excitement for what lies ahead in the realm of open-source technology. Join us for a session brimming with inspiration, partnership tales, and a look at the horizon of digital progress.
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Hey everybody. We are talking about a fascinating topic around the surge of data at the edge these days with a true innovator, zdata. How are you, maxi?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well, Evan. How are you doing today?
Speaker 1:I'm really well Fascinating topic. I talk a lot about edge computing, but you guys are taking a really fascinating and novel approach. Before that, maybe just introduce yourself, and how would you describe your team and the mission these days?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, so I appreciate the time and great to meet you. So my full name is Michael Maxey. I go by my last name. There's 4.5 million Mikes in America if you believe Wikipedia. I've gone by my last name for quite a while. Zadida is an edge orchestration and management company, so we've really been focused since day one, which is seven years ago, around building a solution for moving workloads to the edge Again, pushing applications to data, and that's really been our business and our focus. You know the word Zadida is challenging to pronounce. It actually does have some meaning. Our founder is Moroccan and in Moroccan it translates to innovation. But yeah, it's a great company, been around about seven years and you know we're really focused on, you know, solving solutions for big enterprises when they're deploying compute outside the data center.
Speaker 1:Well, you're at the right time at the right place, because the edge is just exploding, particularly now, with more and more data coming in through more and more systems. How do you differentiate between, let's say, traditional edge computing solutions? Or, you know, iot has been around for a while now. What's the problem you're solving today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the problem we're solving today is one we recognized in the beginning, which was, you know, the conventional wisdom seven years ago is we'll just connect everything and push it to the cloud, right, and then in the cloud we'll do all the data analytics or AI or whatever we need to do. And what the founders sort of recognized is that, you know, our networks are built for download. They're asymmetrical in nature and so we can stream video. So upload is harder, it's more expensive and the amount of devices coming online is just, you know, way overwhelming. Any network is coming online is just way overwhelming any network.
Speaker 2:So they set out really day one to bring a cloud-like experience to your compute running anywhere in the world and where. That is right. And what that means is you end up dealing with a number of new challenges outside the data center, and one of them is networking. Right, you're not always on reliable networks. If you're in a vehicle rolling out to an oil well, you probably have no network for a period of time, but you still need to function and you still need to be able to be updated and these sorts of things.
Speaker 2:So we set out very early on to build systems that address these unique requirements of outside the data center compute. Our early adopters were very much big industries oil and gas and automotive and the industries that have invested billions outside data centers, building oil wells and factories and dealerships and these sorts of things. So that's really been our focus. Our unique capabilities is we're built for this environment. A lot of the other technologies that are really popular, you know kind of evolved through the cloud where you have connectivity and you have a guy that can go put a USB key if something bad happens, or you know power cycle machines. You know you can't do that on the edge. So it is a different paradigm you have to build for and you know we've been really, you know, toiling away at that I guess for the last seven years.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, your efforts are certainly starting to pay off. You've also taken a really unique open source approach within the context of the Linux Foundation. Maybe talk about that and that approach as well, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we, you know, part of our solution is it's called EVE stands for edge virtualization engine. It's what you install on the node and we made that open source and put it into the Linux foundation edge project. So LF edge is a group of, as it sounds, edge related projects or infrastructure for data. There's blueprints, there's about, I think, 18 projects now. Inside there there's some AI solutions, data movement.
Speaker 2:So we were one of the founding members that sort of created LF Edge back in the day and the idea was, you know, as an operating system. You know open source brings a lot of value. You know we sell to big enterprises. They want to know what's in your operating system and they maybe want to modify it. They maybe want to run a Red Hat version of it or read a Suse version of it.
Speaker 2:So open sourcing, it gives a lot of visibility into our customers. It also helps build a community so other developers can come in, start to build on E use it in their own way if they want to go build edge projects or something to that extent. So open source is a big part of sort of our DNA and our company and has been, you know, for four or five years now and you know it's really helped our company. I think as we've evolved from our first customers to you know the series of customers we now have in the enterprise space, having that transparency and having flexibility that comes with it our customers can contribute if they need custom things has really unlocked some of our deals and some of our customers.
Speaker 1:Fantastic and congratulations on the recent CREC funding no small task. How does that accelerate some of the goals that you just outlined there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it was surprising and incredible. You know, I think you know raising money these days is no trivial feat. So the team did a fantastic job and we're super excited with the new investors. You know it was led by Smith Point Capital and the team there is really great. They've been super helpful. With the new investors it was led by SmithPoint Capital and the team there is really great. They've been super helpful, very hands-on, opening doors for us, challenging us.
Speaker 2:So it's changed the company a bit in that we can now invest where we wanted to invest and maybe couldn't as much in the past. So we're looking hard at edge AI and how we can partner and accelerate solutions there. We're thinking about, you know, different geographies that maybe we couldn't have covered in the past. You know so do we open offices and remote locations and those sorts of things. So it has unlocked. We're not going crazy. We're not, you know, spending 90 percent of it on ads in Facebook or anything like that. We're still a pretty conservative growth company, which is why I think we were able to raise such a successful round. As you know our valuations and our growth and you know we we really built foundations versus sort of hype. So you know we'll continue that strategy. We're going to go faster, we're going to do more, but you know we're also going to sort of build a meaningful business along the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, wonderful mission. So it seems you focus a lot on increasing visibility, security, control of this distributed edge. I mean, is this the main strategy to allow your customers to handle this kind of surge in demand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think like, maybe the way to describe it is you know, what we typically see is you know, an enterprise will have a project, Right, and the project could be you know, I want to optimize how I do something near the edge. I want to collect more data and do predictive maintenance on a machine. Right, I want to know when this machine is going to break down. So they'll go and they'll work with a vendor or they'll build something in open source or they'll build something proprietary and they'll put together a system that consists of generally like an old virtual machine that connects to the machine.
Speaker 2:Windows NT or Windows 2000 connects to a bunch of containers that do something you know, around that piece of data. They'll build it and they'll get to that point and they're like okay, now how do I deploy this in 10,000 places? Right, and that's really where we come from, right, so we're not building the applications that connect to the machine. That's all our partnerships or what our customers are doing. We're that layer that says, okay, let's take that combination, and you know it also generally includes a firewall and some network connectivity and these sorts of things as well. How do you bundle all that up, ship it to 10,000 locations, update it when it needs to be updated and, at the same time, make sure you know it's your device and you know the software is complete right. And that's really what we bring to that equation. Is that scale?
Speaker 1:and that distribution piece. Well said, you've built some really interesting partnerships around the go-to-market. It's quite an ecosystem there. It's a very complex landscape. Care to call out those partners at all or how that's going to help support, you know, developers and customers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean like it's hard to choose one because you know my role is to love all of them. They're all my favorite, you know. But I think that you know, as I just described, it's key to our platform, right, like people want to run an outcome, they want to do value at the edge, and we help them deliver that value to the edge. But we don't build those apps. So the partnerships are super important, you know. I think that you know we do have some OEMs that maybe I'll call out because they're very tight partnerships.
Speaker 2:You know, emerson is an industrial company, also Rockwell Automation. They both use our platform and they bring in their applications and sort of specialize around their market and are using our solution to deliver to their end customers, you know. So maybe we'll call out those. And then I also we have a marketplace concept, which is how you deploy applications to these nodes. So, like your phone, you sort of can browse applications and my role is sort of building out that as well. So we have some great partnerships in there and they're all on our website, so go take a look. And our goal is really to make it easy for our customers to find best of breed, but bring what they need to bring on their own and you know, manage that at scale. So thousands or tens of thousands of places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as your open source, I imagine you'll be deployed everywhere, anywhere. Where are you finding most traction, any particular scenarios or verticals or sort of industry? Obviously, automation is a good one in the industrial manufacturing side of things, but what say you?
Speaker 2:I mean, you know these projects take time, right. I mean it's hard to buy 10,000 computers and send them to 10,000 patients. So you know, I think like where we see a lot of traction was where we started, which was sort of in the oil and gas space, right? So our first customer was an oil and gas services company, gigantic company that they, you know a lot of their IP is going to these wells and, you know, helping the operators optimize them right. And so you're running on trucks, you're running outside the data center, amazing security requirements and networking requirements, and their IP is on those trucks. So it's critical to their business. And that was our first customer.
Speaker 2:So you know, we've expanded inside that customer to more and more use cases. We're in like five or six different departments now. But we've also signed other oil and gas, both producers and service providers. So that's kind of where we started and you know I have a really strong story in that vertical. But we're also used in transportation, you know. So we work with automotive companies and shipping vessel companies. We're embedded in machines, so we end up on, you know, factory floors. Retail is starting to pick up. We're seeing more and more demand in the retail space, and so it's kind of you know, our history is that oil and gas and we're super strong there, but more and more we're seeing a broader set of use cases and customers.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. What's next? You're involved in so much within the industries you serve. What are you looking forward to the next weeks and months out there in terms of meetings? I know there's a ton happening in the Linux Foundation arena, but what are you personally excited about?
Speaker 2:But what are you personally excited about? Yeah, I mean, you know, I guess, maybe starting with the Linux Foundation space, we just came out of the One Summit, which is sort of the annual event that includes LF Edge, which is the group that we participate in, and LF Networking. So, you know, here in San Jose it was a great conference. It was nice to finally meet a lot of the people I've been on Zoom with for the last few years. It was nice to finally meet a lot of the people I've been on Zoom with for the last few years and, part of my role, I'm on the board of the LF Edge. So we really are trying to drive a lot of awareness around this.
Speaker 2:I think that we met as a board and we kind of talked through how do we do things faster and broader, and part of that is plugging into some of the vertical groups, either open source or industry groups.
Speaker 2:So we're going to start kind of packaging up off edge into, you know, more of a consumable set of like here's really what we can do and start bringing it to other communities because you know they're looking for solutions.
Speaker 2:And then we're also, you know, we we want to make it easy for people to consume the stuff we build, right, because you know open source is fantastic, but if you download something and you spend eight hours making it work, it takes eight hours, so it's valuable to you, right? So you know we've introduced this project called the LFH Sandbox, which is a SaaS-based deployment solution. It's basically Zadita, but on loan to the LF Edge for developers to use, where they can just kind of one-click deploy all these projects. So we're trying to drive a faster experience for developers and users so they can just sort of stand up like a data solution and try it that day instead of really having to grind through documentation and figure out how to make it work. So you know there's a lot of effort around. You know, easy to consume, not only from other projects but even for developers and consumers of the open source projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's fascinating. I see you're an active member of the Kubernetes community and leveraging infrastructure for Edge Kubernetes. You're really in the heart of cloud native development. You know this modern approach to cloud development. What's next? Anything you care to share? I imagine you're ramping up the team as well. Where are you guys physically based? Are you? You know, virtually and everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a little bit of both right, like we have. So we have three main offices today. You know, our headquarters is San Jose, california. We have a development and well, it's basically an office in Berlin as well, berlin, germany, and then we have a couple offices in India, and then we have people Berlin as well, berlin, germany, and then we have a couple offices in India. And then we have people distributed as well, both developers and, you know, sales and support and other teams. So we are pretty distributed. We're in a lot of countries. You know Our software is deployed all over. You know we have one particular customer that's deployed in 72 different companies or countries. I should say Wow. So you know the workload is distributed and so is the team. You know, and you mentioned Kubernetes. So just circling back to that, we see a lot of Kubernetes.
Speaker 2:We have Kubernetes as a service, so similar to your cloud offerings, you can kind of quickly deploy Kubernetes and that's an interesting challenge at the edge, you know, because you're running on one node and you're running a cluster, and how do you manage 10,000 of those? So you know, we do a fair amount in that space and we're really trying to invest in that space to make you know to kind of change a little bit around the paradigm. I mean, the classic Kubernetes is you have, you know, five or 10 really big clusters. You know we have 5,000 really small ones. So it's a different challenge to go solve and we work really closely with our customers and community around that.
Speaker 1:Fantastic. Well, congrats on all the success onwards and upwards, any travel for yourself coming up, Anything interesting, personally, professionally, to call out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'm going to Red Hat Summit next week in Denver so I'm curious to connect with some folks there and learn more about what they're doing and working on partnerships there. And then it takes two years to get one. So I'll mention that I'm going to Bandon Dunes to golf in the summer, pretty excited about that. So you know a little personal life there wonderful.
Speaker 1:Well, enjoy that and enjoy denver. Spring has arrived. Finally, and thanks so much for sharing insights on the edge of technology. No pun intended, really fascinating work thanks, good discussion, great question thanks everyone for watching and you know, reach, reach out, follow the team. They're doing some amazing work. Take care. Bye-bye.